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Traditioanl Eastern Cape kudu driven hunt

“Jay, what would you say on trying a driven kudu hunt?” I asked. “Sure, hell why not sounds interesting.”

This is what started this set of pictures after we saw a lot of kudu but out of reach in the mountains close to Willowmore in the eastern Cape on a very cold morning after a cold front as moved in from the night with some rain as well. We saw plenty of kudu that morning but they were hiding away from the cold in the valleys and ravines, the bulls obviously took to more hiding than the cows and young ones. We must have seen over 50 kudu that morning with 2-3 good bulls but they were very weary and onto our plan to hunt them. We decided to retire for brunch when Valie asked me if Jay would mind a driven hunt. We did however saw an abundant amount of different species that morning. It was my first time to see a black springbuck, fallow deer in the wild as well as Cape grysbuck and for Urdubob it was his first time to see a black springbuck, black wildebeest, cape grysbuck and a mountain reedbuck.

Well you know the answer to the question I asked Urdubob we had a very nice brunch on Timbila game ranch and headed back to the camp an hour or so later. We organized two helpers that would walk trough the thick stuff to move the kudu out. And we found this great spot on the side of a small Karoo river. It was an excellent vantage point the kudu had to move out into the open to cross the river. We were nicely settled in behind a hump of dried mud that had settled there after the small flood, a while back. There were 4 set of eyes looking for any sign of kudu advancing and suddenly to our left we saw the first kudu cow running towards us and then more I counted around 12 when the old bull suddenly came out running at full speed with another cow behind him.

“He’s good shoot him!” Said Herman and Valie also told jay to take him as soon as he can. “Shoot, shoot!” said valie as the bull was almost opposite us with not much ground left after that where he would vanish with his cows. I tried my best to try and get a picture of him running towards us and luckily got a picture off on his run before a second later the .300 WSM with failsafes barked and the kudu dropped to a spine shot so particular of the hind legs just dropping. The bull dragging forward with his front legs Jay chambered another round and put a finishing shot trough his neck. The range was around 35 yards but a kudu at full speed at such a distance is a difficult target and we were very happy that Jay dropped him with his first shot. We had to walk a way around to get to the kudu and was he a terrific animal even among so many kudu on the farm he held a harem of 13 cows but he sure had some battle scars on him with a broken jaw and an abscess that would have ruined the cape if Urdubob wanted a shoulder mount on him but luckily Urdubob only wanted a European mount on him.
The bull measured out 49 1/4" almost making the magical 50” which is as good as a 60” bull up north with the avg. of bulls carrying 45” when full grown in the Eastern Cape. With nice thick bosses and deep curls the bull scored 118 on SCI for Eastern Cape Kudu with the minimum being 98. So if anyone knows what medal he would score we would appreciate it.

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